DrMaryam Naghsh Nejad

When someone has cancer, goes through IVF, cares for an ageing parent, or reaches menopause while still working, the costs do not stop at the hospital door. They show up as reduced hours, lost promotions, savings drawn down early, and superannuation balances that never recover. Because these costs fall on households and workplaces rather than health budgets, they are largely invisible to the policies that shape them. My research makes them visible, and puts numbers on them that decision-makers can act on.

Working with Australia's population-scale linked administrative data, I produce the first national evidence on questions that have previously been answered with anecdote. My work on involuntary childlessness and fertility treatment showed what IVF actually costs Australian families, not only in out-of-pocket payments, but in careers interrupted and retirement savings withdrawn years early. That evidence was presented to the NSW Parliament's Select Committee on Fertility Support and Assisted Reproductive Treatment, where it prompted further questions on notice and new analysis, and led the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to seek my input as a key informant in redeveloping national accreditation standards for ART services.

I work directly with the organisations that hold the levers: superannuation funds and insurers on retirement security and health costs, and the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

The through-line is equity. The health events I study fall unevenly - more often on women, on carers, and on communities already carrying the most- and so do their economic consequences. My aim is to ensure that when policy is made about health, someone has counted what it costs people to live through it.